Thursday

Today I was at the HOT counter in the mall talking about getting internet arranged. I had chickened out the night before and spoke in English because I hadn’t yet learned the words in Hebrew for things like modem (“modem”) and cables (“cabelim”). When I came back this morning the guy remembered me, so English it was.

At one point he asked for my address for the delivery, so I gave it to him. Unfortunately, I pronounced the street name in my English way. Just like how I say Jerusalem instead of the Hebrew “Yerushalayim” when I’m speaking English, or how in English I pronounce the Hebrew word challah without the throat scraping. The guy asked me to repeat it, and this time I tried to sound a little bit more Israeli when I said it, but the fact that I was speaking English still stood, so I wasn’t about to go all out.

The guy then laughed, and said, “Oh, I didn’t understand because you have such an accent.” The guy and his co-worker saw me blush bright red with embarrassment, and they both started laughing. The other guy said, “Beautiful accent, beautiful accent!” They giggled like little schoolgirls, and then the coworker repeated my street name in my accent quietly to himself, like he was quietly repeating the punchline of a good joke he heard.

Anyway, things moved on. We filled out forms, and the guy helping me refused to believe that I had an Israeli ID card. When I gave him my ID number he interrupted me with, “No no no no no, this is your American ID.” No sir, this is my Israeli ID. “No no no no no, but how can you have Israeli ID?” Because I’m Israeli. “No no no no no.” Yes yes yes yes yes.


A few minutes later I asked when they could install the internet. The co-worker told my guy in Hebrew, “Yom Chamishi…” and so the guy helping me out turned to me and TRIED to say in English, “Thursday.”

What came out instead was something like, “Fursday.” The guy then looked slightly embarrassed, and rolled his eyes upward as if he were trying to remember something difficult. And I saw him very deliberately place his tongue right behind his teeth, as if remembering how they learned to do the sound back in English class in 4th grade or whatever. And so he tried again.

What came out this time was an interesting combination: a raspberry + “ursday.”

At this point the guy looked as bright red as tan people can possibly get, and he said something like, “It is a difficult noise…Tursday.”


I just smiled and said, “That’s okay, it’s a hard sound to make.” But still pissed off about being made fun of for not being able to pronounce my own street name correctly, I looked the worker right in the eyes and added, “THanks for all your help!” as I drew out the TH as a special FUCK YOU to the worker.

Damn it felt good. I spent the rest of the day walking around in glowing smugness as I thought to myself, “Maybe I can’t say my street name correctly, but damnit, at least I can make a TH sound without blowing raspberries.” And I think I got the better end of the deal.